ARTS, BRIEFLY; Clark Art Institute to Sell a Renoir Painting

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: March 19, 2011

MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands -- Museum directors, curators and donors generally come to art fairs to look, and occasionally to buy. But auctions are where museums most often decide to sell works of art, because public sales are widely considered the most transparent method of deaccessioning.

So when the doors to the annual European Fine Art Fair here opened for an invitation-only-preview on Thursday afternoon, one of the most talked-about paintings on view was ''Woman Picking Flowers,'' a Renoir from 1874-1875 that is being sold by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. The canvas, which is hanging as a centerpiece at the booth of Dickinson, a London gallery, depicts Camille Monet, the first wife of Renoir's friend and colleague Claude Monet, standing in a field and holding a bunch of flowers. Sterling Clark bought the painting from Durand-Ruel, the Paris dealer, in 1933. But since the Clark owns 32 other works by the artist, it is selling this one--with a price tag of $15 million--to raise money for future acquisitions.

Asked why the Clark decided to sell the painting at an art fair, Michael Conforti, its director, said in a statement that in today's market, offering the painting at Maastricht ''would afford both transparency and visibility since this art fair is so widely followed and well attended by those individuals who are most likely to have an interest in works of this quality.''

By the time the fair ends on March 27th, about 70,000 people are expected to have visited the cavernous convention center it is held in. As of Friday, ''Woman Picking Flowers'' had not been sold.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.